Fall Tech News at CAIS

Technology in the Classroom at CAIS

October/November 2014 Edition

This month in tech news from the classroom: Lower School reading presentations get a multimedia upgrade; students hone their vocabulary and math skills with a pair of fun web-based programs; and sixth graders create cool claymations inspired by stories read in English class.

Read on to learn more about the exciting ways teachers and students at CAIS have been using technology!

Math and Pinyin Learning Made Fun with Interactive Apps

Looking for a fun way to differentiate math practice in your Chinese classroom? Consider trying the Honeybee math app! First graders are enjoying practicing their math skills with this new app. Students can choose their own difficulty level, ranging from basic addition and subtraction through single-digit multiplication and division problems. In addition, students can practice in different learning modes, with or without a time limit. Best of all, students can create problems for themselves and check their graded results at the end.

Learning Pinyin is fun with our newly introduced best friend Monkey King Pinyin app! Touring with Monkey King, first grade students learned pronunciations, tones, and written forms of all Pinyin initials and finals. Students were highly engaged in learning as they sought to overcome all the difficulties to help Monkey King proceed in his Journey to the West.

Take a Trip to SpellingCity!

How can we make learning vocabulary more engaging andeffective? In third through fifth grades this year, the answer is: SpellingCity! After several successful years of use in sixth grade Humanities class, SpellingCity has now found a home in the Lower School as well. Bringing a new level of excitement to word study, SpellingCity allows students to play fun games that teach them word spellings and definitions. Teachers, too, are big fans of this new tool, as it provides the flexibility to introduce students to new word lists or have them revisit old lists and work with the words in a new way. Even better, our full classroom sets of Chromebooks make it possible for teachers to seamlessly integrate this web-based tool into their classroom instruction.

Multimedia Poetry Presentations in Fourth Grade Chinese

Reading presentations took on new life in fourth grade Chinese classes this year thanks to the addition of an exciting multimedia project! After composing their Chinese poems, students began work on iMovie presentations. Selecting images from a shared image folder created by teacher Lucy Sui, students inserted both their poems and images into iMovie and set their poems to music. By rehearsing their read-alouds, they were able to adjust the iMovie clip length to match their reading pace. Check out a few highlights from the students' multimedia poetry reading below!

Chinese Poem Recitation with English Slideshows 

How do we celebrate Chinese, English and technology learning in one project? Check out our fourth and fifth grade classes' poetry reading projects! Students wrote poems in Chinese and then translated their poems into English. Next, using Google Presentations, students created slideshows with English translations of their poems and selected backgrounds and images. During the presentations, students recited their poems in Chinese with the English slideshows as their backgrounds. Student worked together in teams with one student advancing the slides as another student presented. To see some sample slides from two students' Google presentations, click here.

When Fifth Grade Met Sixth Grade...

"What will life be like in middle school?" is a question that is at the forefront of many of our fifth graders' minds. To help answer this question, our fifth and sixth grade Chinese teachers collaborated and developed a clever idea for a project to help our students bridge the gap between Lower and Middle school. In Chinese class, sixth graders created Keynote presentations about their classrooms, teachers, curricula, schedules, and so on. Then they visited fifth grade Chinese classes and introduced their slides to their fifth grade buddies. After the presentations, our middle schoolers patiently answered any questions their fifth grade buddies raised. Click here if you, too, are interested in learning about what sixth grade is like!

Learn to Make Ninja Stars with Sixth Graders

Writing a "How-To" expository essay in Chinese can be daunting. However, our sixth graders are determined to tackle expository essay writing skills in Chinese class! Not only did students write and illustrate step-by-step instructions on how to make origami ninja stars, but they also created tutorial iMovie videos to help others replicate the process. You will be amazed by how our students accurately used advanced vocabulary such "fold in half", "meet center crease", "crease and unfold", and "line up the edges" in Chinese. If you don't know how to create a ninja star, see below to find out!   

Middle School Mathematicians Excel with IXL

Looking for a tool to help reinforce students' foundational math skills, or perhaps provide extra practice with newly introduced concepts? Look no further than IXL! Middle School math teachers Kaicy MacLeod and Scott Muir are using this web-based K-12 math practice tool to help build their students' skills. "The power is in the reinforcement," says Scott. "Students get instant feedback on how they did." IXL features worksheet-type practice in which students complete an individually customized number of problems until they demonstrate mastery. In addition, teachers find that they can use IXL both for remediation and enrichment depending on students' individual needs.

Sixth Grade Cross-Curricular Stop Motion Animation Project

This fall sixth grade teachers Jake Sproull, Jeri Countryman and Peery Sloan collaborated to develop a cross-disciplinary project that rolled humanities, technology, and art into one! First, in technology class, students learned techniques for creating stop motion animations using the iStopMotion iPad app. Next, students transferred these skills to art class, where they used a variety of techniques and materials (such as clay, tin foil, fishing line and paper) to animate scenes from stories inspired by ones being read in English class. Check out an example of the students' work below...and find out what happened when the three little pigs encountered the big bad wolf!

Upcoming Technology Professional Development Opportunities

Increase Student Learning with Mobile Devices and the Best, New Apps (Grades 6-12) - Sunnyvale, CA, December 9

IntegratED PDX 2015 - Portland, OR, Feb. 25-27, 2015

Teach Through Technology - Harker School, San Jose, CA, March 7, 2015

Annual CUE Conference - Palm Springs, CA, March 19-22, 2015

Leadership 3.0 - Redondo Beach, CA, April 16-18, 2015

The Back to School Tech Report

Technology in the Classroom at CAIS

September 2014 Edition

  

Just over a month into the new school year and already our students have been busy using technology! In the Lower School, the new classroom sets of Chromebooks have been coming in handy for our third, fourth and fifth graders for tasks ranging from practicing their keyboarding skills to studying Chinese characters. In the Middle School, all sixth, seventh and eighth graders now have iPads and faculty new to the 1:1 iPad program (including our three new teachers and eighth grade Chinese teacher) have seamlessly transitioned into teaching and learning with iPads. 

Read on to learn more about the exciting ways teachers and students at CAIS have been using technology in the first month of school! 

  

"Our School, Our Community" Digital Storytelling 

First graders started the year off with a bang with their first integrated unit...and first technology project! As part of the "Our School, Our Community" unit, students used the Drawing Pad app for iPad to create colorful portraits of themselves. Next students combined these images with photos of different areas of the school to generate a slideshow. Finally, students recorded their stories along with the slides using the iPad app Explain Everything. Students enjoyed recording it again and again to perfect their speech! Below is an example of how a first grader described CAIS and himself.

 

 

Using Edmodo in a Blended Learning Format: 

Digital Chinese Initiative (DCI) Update 

Fourth Grade Teacher Lucy Sui, working together with DCI Program Manager Adam Ross, created a blended learning assignment to teach students how to do multiple digit multiplication in Chinese. After Lucy taught her math lesson in class, students were later tasked to log in to an online class page in the educational website Edmodo to review the steps of multiplication in a flipped classroom video. Students then engaged in a task to listen to an applied problem in Chinese, and then to provide a recorded answer to the task in their own words in Chinese, which they then uploaded to the Edmodo site. Lucy and Adam will be planning more work for the fourth graders via Edmodo in the coming weeks.

Sample assignment and student response on Edmodo.

Making Memorizing Chinese Characters Fun With Quizlet  

Memorizing Chinese characters can be fun! Fourth grade teachers Lucy Sui and Annie Liu created a virtual vocabulary learning class using Quizlet, a free study tool. In Quizlet, teachers create a list of new phrases and their definitions, then invite students to log in using their classroom Chromebooks. Once students log in (with their CAIS Google Apps accounts), they can learn the new phrases at their own pace in different modes such as flashcard, speller, and scatter game. Teachers can see students' participation, performance, and even study habits on each activity. Fourth grade classes are thrilled to use this tool -- how about your class? (Click here to see Lucy's classes' Quizlet flashcard sets.) 

  

Fifth Graders Go Globetrotting with Google Tour Builder Take a virtual trip around the world and experience summer through the eyes of one of our fifth graders! In Sean Mosconi's fifth grade class, students started the year with an innovative project that integrated a fresh, new tech tool to a traditional back-to-school task: writing about the summer. First students composed personal narrative stories about five different places they visited over the summer, honing in on a small moment for each story. Next, students used Google Tour Builder to create a virtual tour of the places they visited and experiences they had along the way. Students pinpointed the various locations and customized their tours to include photos, text, icons and more! To take a spin around the globe with one of our fifth graders, click here (note that you must have the Google Earth plugin installed on your computer to be able to view the tour).   

Go For a Space Race in Middle School Math Class!
Racing rocket ships in math class? Sounds like Socrative! This easy-to-use student response system is just one of the tools Kaicy MacLeod uses to make her seventh and eighth grade math classes fun and interactive. Using Socrative, Kaicy prepares practice problems and quizzes for the class, then pushes them out to students with the tap of a button. Students log in to her classroom via their iPads, solve problems and submit their responses. Teachers can access an automated report showing details of how students responded and can opt to display student responses anonymously to the entire class. Best of all, Socrative can be used on any device (laptop, tablet or phone), is appropriate for all age levels, and is completely free! For more ideas on how you could use this great tool in your classroom, click here.   

Google Scripts Disrupt Eighth Grade Chinese Writing Class
Looking for a good way to distribute your Google Doc assignment to students and give students timely and individualized feedback on their work? Doctopus and Goobric are the way to go! In eighth grade Chinese writing class, Chu-sheng Tang created a writing assignment in Google Docs and pushed it out to her students using Doctopus Google App script. Doctopus automatically creates a folder in the teacher's Google Drive with copies of the assignment sheet for each student. Then Chu-sheng created a rubric for the assignment in Goobric (another Google App Script) and used it to assess her students' writing. Finally, Goobric generated an automated email to each student containing their score, the rubric, and individualized feedback. Click here to see a sample email sent to an eighth grade student with feedback on the writing assignment.   

Back and Better Than Ever: 

Typequick and Common Sense Media Programs
Now in their second year of implementation, Typequick and Common Sense Media return to campus much like our students after their summer break: a little older and a little wiser. Once again students in kindergarten through eighth grade are building their digital citizenship skills with the help of Common Sense Media. In the Middle School this year, Common Sense lessons will take on new life as part of a newly enriched and evolving advisory program, led by Middle School counselor Rachel Packer. Typequick, too, returns to campus with enhancements to the program. Students in third, fourth and fifth grades have been busy with start-of-year typing assessments and getting their typing practice underway. 

  

Upcoming Technology Professional Development Opportunities

OETC IntegratEd - San Francisco, CA, October 3-4

Fall CUE Conference - Napa Valley, CA, October 24-25

EdTech Innovation Symposium - Santa Clara, CA, October 27

Increase Student Learning with Mobile Devices and the Best, New Apps (Grades 6-12) - Sunnyvale, CA, December 9 

Annual CUE Conference - Palm Springs, CA, March 19-22, 2015

The Final Final: Year End Tech News

Technology in the Classroom at CAIS

May/June 2014 Edition

  

Time flies when you're having fun...with technology! As the year draws quickly to a close, we wanted to take a moment to share some of the exciting news about end-of-year technology projects that have been happening in our very own classrooms.

Looking back, it has been a momentous year for CAIS in educational technology. We are so impressed by the efforts you have made to develop your skills and find new and creative ways to integrate technology to your classrooms. We applaud you all for the great work you have done and look forward to collaborating with you on more tech projects next year!

Best wishes for a relaxing, rejuvenating summer.

Thank You, Brad
The end of every school year brings mixed emotions. We
look forward to new beginnings while also having to say some sad farewells. This year CAIS loses a longtime, tireless and devoted employee, one whom we personally know well. Brad Wright deserves the lion's share of the credit for what CAIS's technology program is today. It is thanks to Brad's wisdom, vision and leadership that the very content of this newsletter exists. Brad's exceptional qualities are seemingly too numerous to list: he is selfless in his willingness to help; unfailingly patient; unflappable in the face of adversity. He is someone we all rely upon and trust implicitly.

Brad, we thank you for your immeasurable contributions to this school. It has been a pleasure and a privilege to work with you, and we wish you all the very best.

Oral Presentations Go Digital
In preparation for their final presentations, first graders created digital collage animation videos using the Pic Collage and Puppet Pals iPad apps. In Pic Collage, students searched for images and created two or three digital collages based on their own stories. Then in Puppet Pals students created a personal avatar using photos of themselves. Finally, students recorded their speech by manipulating the avatars and flipping through the collage photos. These animation videos became background videos on their oral presentation day. Here is a cute video of a student describing "What is Courage".

  

  
Design Your Dream Shoes, Then Bring Them to Life!
If you could design the coolest pair of shoes you could possibly imagine, what would they look like? And moreover, what would they do if you could bring them to life? In Lisa Ostapinski's second grade art classes, students recently tackled these very questions. First students designed their dream shoes, then created them out of clay. Next students received a crash course in stop motion animation (think:Gumby or the old school Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer movie!) Using iPads and the iStopMotion animation app, students worked in groups to animate their dream shoes in a short video. Check out an example of the dream shoes in action below!

 

Animal Folk Tales Play
Have you ever wondered why different animals have their own extraordinary features? Fifth graders would love to share their thoughts with you! In Michael Hsu's fifth grade Chinese classes, students chose one special feature of an animal and developed their own stories about that feature. In groups of four or five, students selected one student's story and developed the story into a play. They prepared the props and practiced their expressions for about a week before the actual iMovie shooting. Take a look at one student's video "Why The Snake Is Long" and see how students immersed themselves in their roles!

Digital Books Meet Colonial America 
In a project involving what has undoubtedly become one of the most popular apps used in classroom technology at CAIS this year, Ron Morris's fifth graders used Book Creator to digitize their informational books on colonial trades. Each year, Ron has incorporated technology in a different way to this project, a perennial favorite among students. Students research a specific colonial trade and present the results of their findings both through an informational book and physical artifacts which they create. At Colonial Day, the culminating presentation, visiting parents and students stopped by fifth graders' stations to view artifacts and browse through the digital books displayed on student iPads. To see an example (and perhaps learn something about the colonial shoemaker), click here!

Six Seconds of Science!
Design and conduct your very own science experiment...then present it in six seconds! Sound like a daunting task? Not for our sixth graders! In a collaborative project between Mark Churchill's sixth grade math/science class and Jeri Countryman's technology class, students created short, snappy videos illustrating their science fair projects. Their challenge: to clearly show their experiment (the what, why and how) plus the experimental results in a six second video. Students began by creating a storyboard and then learned iMovie skills such as how to insert photos and videos, edit and trim clips, and add titles. After creating their videos using iMovie, the final projects were compiled into one master video file and projected on loop during the Middle School Science Fair. Check out one example of a student video below (and remember, this will only take six seconds of your time!) 

Confucius is Coming
Two thousand years ago, Confucius said: "Teach students according to their aptitude", "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", and "Two heads are better than one". This year sixth graders in YaChing Hsu-Kelkis's Chinese classes learned these famous sayings from the Analects of Confucius. Students not only memorized these sayings but also related them to their own lives. Using Google Docs, they collaborated in small groups to develop their own play scripts. Then they assigned roles to their group members and practiced the acting before shooting video. Students enjoyed acting out their own stories and editing the footage using iMovie. Check out one group's video below!

Creating Interactive Digital Magazines
For the second year in a row, sixth graders in Jake Sproull's English Humanities class rounded out the year by flexing their digital publishing muscles! In their capstone writing project, sixth graders created their own magazines on a topic of their choosing. Students had the option to "go digital" with part or all of their magazine. In a collaboration with Jeri Countryman's technology class, students learned to use iBooks Author, a Mac application, to create a digital book with a section that included a short story and an interactive ad. In addition, students learned to use BookryWidgets to create fun interactive widgets. To see an example of a student's digital story and interactive ad, click here. To view a student's final magazine project, click here.

Disease-Fighting Superheroes in Science Class 
Evil HIV cell Herman I. Vernon, meet Lymphina, the HIV-fighting superwoman! In small groups, students in Susan Sherman's seventh grade science class chose a disease-causing pathogen and conducted research on their nefarious bug. Instead of writing a report, students wove together a storyline involving a superhero, supervillain and super-powered animal to illustrate their findings. Using the Comic Life iPad app, students then brought their tales of triumph over disease to life! Check out one student's project in the photo, taken at this year's fantastic Middle School Science Fair on June 4.
  

Upcoming Technology Professional Development Opportunities

Harker Teacher Institute - Palo Alto, CA, June 7

iCore - Crystal Springs Uplands School, June 9-10

Teach 21 West - San Francisco, CA, June 23-26

Institute for 21st Century Educators - Oakland, June 24-26

Organizing Your Makerspace - Lighthouse Community Charter School, Oakland, CA, June 26 

The iPad Classroom - UC Berkeley, July 7-9

Google Chromebook & The Google-Infused Classroom - UC Berkeley, July 10-11

The Advanced iPad Classroom - UC Berkeley, July 10-11

Design Making Experiences - Lighthouse Community Charter School, Oakland, CA, July 17-18 or August 7-8

Google Apps for Education CA Summit - Palo Alto, July 19-20

CUE Rockstar Teacher Camp - Las Vegas, NV, July 21-23

Fall CUE Conference - Napa Valley, CA, October 24-25

The Spring Ed Tech Roundup

The latest and greatest tech news from the classroom at CAIS. Read on to learn about what our teachers and students have been doing with technology in April!

Interactive Books Enliven Kindergarten Reading Centers

In McKenzie Morgan and Kimberly Reid's kindergarten classes, students are experiencing a new level of interactivity in their reading centers thanks to fun interactive reading apps! Students work in reading centers and rotate through an iPad station approximately once per week. There students may read an interactive eBook, such as "All By Myself" by Mercer Mayer. Students who are learning to read can build their literacy skills by listening to the story narration. In addition, students can learn new vocabulary through tappable words and pictures. After reading the book, students work on making text-to-self connections. Another reading app used by some kindergarteners at their iPad stations is Lexia Reading, which allows pre-readers to develop phonemic awareness. Finally, some students who need work on reading and spelling sight words use a Sight Words app. Our kindergarten teachers are finding that the iPads are proving to be useful tools to differentiate reading instruction in their classrooms!

 

First Graders as Chinese Music Video Producers

Budding rock stars in our midst! This month first graders in Sue Geng's class choreographed, directed, and performed their very own music videos. Using a Chinese version of the classic children's tune "If You're Happy and You Know It" (如果感到幸福你就拍拍手), students worked in groups and assumed different roles in their music video production. One student served as director/videographer while two children choreographed and another assumed the role of lead singer. They may have missed the lyrics once or twice or even been a bit off-key, but they were having a great time learning Chinese and making music videos! Check out the adorable results of their efforts below!

 

Digital Storytelling Meets Writing Workshop

"Little pig, little pig, let me come in!"

"Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!"

These words from the classic fairy tale "The Three Little Pigs" became the inspiration for our second graders to compose their very own fairy tales this spring. In Ryan Hughes and Diana Gross/Lisa Ma's second grade English classes, students completed a Writing Workshop unit on fairy tales. First, students hand-wrote and illustrated their stories. Then they brought their stories to life through digital storytelling. Students used Drawing Pad to create their illustrations and SonicPics to record their voices as they read their stories aloud. Check out an example of a student's fairy tale project below!

 

Students Get Imaginative with Chinese Digital Books

Learning transition words has never been so easy...or so much fun! Second grade students in ChiChi Su and Teresa Shyu's classes practiced writing with transition words in a fun digital book project. First students brainstormed an idea for something they would like to have. Next students wrote about what they would want to do with that item if they were to get it! In their writing, students were required to use transition words such as "first", "next", "then", and "last". Students illustrated their writing using Drawing Pad iPad app, then imported their pictures to Book Creator and recorded themselves reading their stories aloud. Check out the sample student video below, in which one student proclaims: "If I have a dragon, first I will take him to barbecue marshmallows in the sun!"

 

Using Graphic Organizers to Enhance Chinese Writing

Third graders in Teresa Shyu and Weiwen Yang's classes used Kidspiration and Popplet to create graphic organizers to help prepare for in-class debates. First, teachers showed students different examples of mapping diagrams that could be used for opinion and narrative writing. Then students worked individually or in groups to create their own mind maps. Students created thought bubbles to capture their ideas and connected related bubbles to organize their thoughts. One significant benefit of using these graphic organizers was that the maps made it easy for teachers and students to identify where more detail was needed to expand students' ideas.

Writing Workshop Goes Digital: Take 2!

Google Drawing of Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana

Once again, our Lower School English teachers have put a new spin on informational writing with the help of technology. This year Anne Valentino and Sean Mosconi used their Social Studies unit on California Missions as the basis for their Writing Workshop study of informational writing. Fourth graders researched the missions using books and websites, then crafted informational writing projects that included many of the important features of an informational text. After composing their writing in Google Docs, students transferred their writing and images to Book Creator to create attractive digital books. In addition, some students opted to use Google Drawings to create an image of the layout of their mission! To see an example of a fourth grader's informational eBook, click here.

  

Learning About Immigration through Filmmaking

Are you familiar with your family history? How much do you know about the challenges your ancestors faced as immigrants? To answer these questions and learn more about immigration, fourth graders in Annie Liu and Cheryl Teng's classes interviewed family members or family friends about their immigration experiences. After the interview, students compiled their subject's responses into stories. Using iMovie, students then transformed the stories into movies by combining video footage of the interview, historical photos, subtitles and music. See an example of a student project below!

Let's Go to Africa!

Our sixth grade students have been busy honing their presentation skills this spring! In Jake Sproull's sixth grade English Humanities class, students researched an African country of their choosing. Concurrently, in technology class with Jeri Countryman, students learned to use two different

presentation apps: Keynote and Haiku Deck. For the Africa

project, students chose one of these presentation tools to share their discoveries about Africa with the rest of the class. Some of the required components of the presentation included a "fast facts" section of statistics, a timeline of the country's history, important sites, and culture. And, of course, students used plenty of images and graphics to make their presentations more visually appealing! Click here to see an example of a student project.  

 

Upcoming Technology Professional Development Opportunities

iCore - Crystal Springs Uplands School, June 9-10

Creativity, Learning, Innovation, Collaboration, K-12 - Castilleja School, June 10-11

CUE Rock Star Camps - Various locations in CA, June/July

Design, Do, Discover - Palo Alto, CA, June 19-20

Teach 21 West - San Francisco, CA, June 23-26

Institute for 21st Century Educators - Oakland, June 24-26

Google Apps for Education CA Summit - Palo Alto, July 19-20

Tech News from the Classroom!

Our iPads, MacBooks and Chromebooks have been getting a workout these past two months! Some recent highlights: first graders get creative on their iPads; fourth graders make healthy eating fun with multimedia presentations; and seventh graders teach us a thing or two about how to make dumplings. Read on to learn more about the latest and greatest technology happenings in the classroom at CAIS!

Just Me, Myself, and My Explain Everything Video

Would you like to personalize learning for your students and engage their imaginations? Sue Geng did just that with her first grade students! In this project, students learned how to describe themselves and their physical appearance. Using the iPad app Explain Everything, students created videos in which they took photos of one another, imported the images to videos and labeled their body parts in Chinese. Finally, working in pairs, students recorded themselves explaining the similarities and differences in appearance between themselves and a classmate. Check out the example below!

Creative Content Creation Meets First Grade Math

Looking for a way to liven up your math instruction? Check out what our first graders are doing in Chinese math! Students developed their own word problems to demonstrate their understanding of subtraction. Using iPads and the Explain Everything app, students created videos in which they illustrated, explained, and solved a word problem. See an example student video below.

 

Bringing New Life to Prewriting with Kidspiration Maps

Want to add some pizzazz to your writing unit? Consider trying Kidspiration! In a recent Writing Workshop unit on persuasive essays, fourth graders in Sean Mosconi's and Anne Valentino's classes used the iPad appKidspiration Maps to support their prewriting process. Using Kidspiration, students created a graphic organizer to display their thesis statement and supporting reasons. Not only were the diagrams visually appealing and fun to create, but they also helped students organize their writing and generate ideas. In addition, Kidspiration Maps has the added benefit of converting from visual diagram to text at the mere tap of a button! Click here to see an example of a student project in writing view.

 

Healthy Eating Made Fun through Multimedia

Think your diet might benefit from a nutritional tuneup? Ask our fourth graders for advice! In Chinese class, fourth graders learned about eating balanced meals based on six categories of nutrition: water, carbohydrates, protein, fats, vitamins and minerals. In this project, students used Google Presentations to design slides that illustrated healthy eating, then used Movenote to record themselves reading descriptions of their balanced meals. The final product was a multimedia video presentation with slides and synchronized videos. Click here to see an example!

Touring CAIS, Fifth Grade Style

Ever wondered what our campus looks like through the eyes of our students? As part of an ongoing collaboration with Tsai Hsing school in Taipei, fifth graders in Ron Morris's class were tasked with introducing the Taiwan students to the CAIS campus. In small groups, students worked together to produce videos presenting various parts of the school, such as the library, gym, music room, and playgrounds. Using iPads and the iMovie app, students recorded footage, edited it, added captions and music, then uploaded their videos to their shared Edmodo group for the Taiwan students to view. The results were both creative and highly entertaining! See a student project example below.

  

Lost and Found with GoAnimate

In a project that is a perennial favorite among fifth graders, students in Michael Hsu's Chinese class used an animated video site called GoAnimate to practice vocabulary relating to lost/found items. First students scripted stories in which they lost something of value to them. Next it was time to bring their stories to life using GoAnimate. To create their videos, students chose characters, added speech balloons containing text, then recorded their speech balloons by reading the text aloud. In the example below, a girl loses her sister. Will she manage to find her missing sibling? There's only one way to find out!

The Ever-Evolving Book Report

In yet another fun twist on the traditional book report, last month Jake Sproull's sixth grade English Humanities students created a "Character Caricature" to report on their historical fiction book of choice. In an integrated project with Jeri

Countryman's sixth grade tech class, students created a poster using the Sketchbook MobileX iPad app. In their poster, students had to portray important aspects of their character including name, physical characteristics, personality traits, and what the character might say. Students were also tasked with creating a background that represented a specific scene from the book. Finally, students had to back up their facts by citing specific page numbers related to poster elements.

Exploring Big Questions in Science with TED-Ed

Is space trying to kill us? How would our bodies work without the force of gravity? These are some of the questions our seventh grade students have grappled with through TED-Ed lessons in Susan Sherman's science class. TED-Ed is a fantastic resource that offers both original online lessons and the ability for educators to build their own lessons around a TED-Ed Original, TED Talk or YouTube video. Educators can add their own questions, discussion topics, and other supplementary materials to their online lesson. In seventh grade science class, students watch a short video, answer multiple choice questions, then post a response to a discussion prompt. If you haven't checked out TED-Ed before, take a peek and see if there might be something for you and your students!

Learn to Make Dumplings...Compliments of our Seventh Grade Chefs!

Dumpling making took on a new twist in Jiun Chou-Young's seventh grade Chinese class this year. Not only did students get a chance to make the tasty traditional Chinese treats, but they also created their very own tutorial videos to help others replicate the process! After making dumplings in class and documenting the process with photos and videos, students used iMovie on their iPads to compile and edit their footage. Finally, they added subtitles and recorded themselves reading pre-written, step-by-step instructions. Dumpling making newbies, take a look and you may learn something from our students!

  

Upcoming Technology Professional Development Opportunities

CUE Rock Star Camps - Various locations in CA, June/July

Design, Do, Discover - Palo Alto, CA, June 19-20

Teach 21 West - San Francisco, CA, June 23-26

Institute for 21st Century Educators - Oakland, CA, June 24-26

Google Apps for Education CA Summit - Palo Alto, CA, July 19-20